Get REAL: Western University students address a moving anti-bullying video to their 12-year-old selves

Sure, learning from our mistakes is a rite of passage that allows us to mature and become better human beings. But sometimes you wish your older, wiser self had decided to pop by for a little heart-to-heart before you paid for those lesson so dearly.

That's why a group of university students has decided to create a moving video campaign using that very hypothesis. As CTV News reports, the Get REAL campaign, spearheaded by a group of University of Western Ontario students, started in February 2011 to fight bullying and homophobia in middle schools.

And while it may have come a little late for the now-undergrads, they're hoping the lessons they wished they'd absorbed as 12-year-olds will help guide the country's current crop of middle school students to be more open-minded.

Campaign founder Chris Studer told CTV he went to an all-boys school and as a "very immature, very insecure" adolescent he directed homophobic slurs at a fellow classmate he considered "girlie." In the video Studer discusses how, as a visible minority, he was aware of the cruelties directed toward him because of the colour of his skin, yet he still chose to pick on the other boy.

Other young people appear alongside Studer to reveal their own stories — some about their wrong actions and others about being on the receiving end of those.

Several LGBT students also impart to their middle school selves that they shouldn't be ashamed of how they're starting to feel.

"These feelings that you're starting to develop, that you're somehow different… these feelings are normal… You're special. Embrace it," says one openly gay student.

Another female student relates a story of how she bullied a boy in junior high and how her 12-year-old self should "feel really bad for doing these things to such a beautiful person."

With visible emotion, she warns her teenaged self that by high school her cruelty will leave her friendless and the only person who will talk to her is the boy she treated so badly.

"And you're going to say sorry and that's not going to mean anything because you can't take it back. You can't apologize enough," she says, wiping the tears from her eyes.

Though the group's activities have so far remained on campus, they're hoping their message will start to proliferate through social media via videos like this. Their ultimate goal, according to the Get REAL YouTube page, is to branch out into junior high school workshops led by university students.